Search This Blog

09 December 2009

the Dartmouth sports fan tradition -- homophobic, antisemitic, anti-women intimidation & screams at the Dartmouth-Harvard squash match

It's Sports Time on Vleeptron!
All the Sports from Vleeptron!
We've got the latest Qx'ii scores!
All the games from the Dwingeloo League!
Dogfighting, fish-shooting,
cockfighting too!
Bare-knuckle boxing from 1902!
A fifth of our Sports
all take place in the Zoo!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!

Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, is one of the prestigious "Ivy League" colleges in the United States -- along with one of its league sports competitors, Harvard.

Dartmouth is a little different from the other Ivy League schools. Academically Dartmouth is a brilliant school with top-tier, world-class professors. But it has an ancient tradition of male students who are rich, drunk thugs, who didn't get into Dartmouth for their brains, but because they come from rich, drunk families and their dads also went to Dartmouth.

* * *

The Valley News
White River Junction, Vermont USA
Saturday 5 December 2009


Dartmouth Students
Slur Harvard Athletes
During Squash Match


by Tris Wykes
Valley News Staff Writer


Hanover, New Hampshire -- A group of about 10 fans led by Big Green men's soccer players pelted Harvard competitors with obscene language and what was interpreted by the parents of a visiting player as an anti-Semitic slur Wednesday when the Dartmouth men's and women’s squash teams lost to the Crimson at Berry Sports Center.

“I was upset by the homophobic and anti-Semitic comments,” said Susan Cohen, who attended the match with her husband, Jerry, to support their son Franklin, a member of the Harvard team. “I don't care if my son wins a squash match, but it's upsetting to hear those things and it’s embarrassing for Dartmouth.”

The heckling was witnessed by a Valley News reporter covering the match. Asked about the incident Thursday, Dartmouth administrators said they would investigate.

Dartmouth student Bryan Giudicelli said Thursday he and his soccer teammates are routinely cursed at and heckled while playing on the road and were seeking to create a similarly intimidating atmosphere at Berry. However, he said the soccer players and some Alpha Delta fraternity brothers didn't realize how hostile such behavior would appear in the crowded squash courts.

“I think we created a good home atmosphere but the way we did it was uncalled for and I understand that now,” Giudicelli said later, stressing that he did not harass any of the Harvard women competitors. “We don't know the etiquette, so it came off much harsher than we intended it to be. I got caught up in the atmosphere and the moment and I'm embarrassed at what happened.”

Bob Ceplikas, Dartmouth's acting athletic director, attended the early part of the matches but departed for a women's soccer team banquet before the vitriol became evident.

“We take very seriously the whole concept of good sportsmanship and we work very hard to encourage that,” Ceplikas said, noting that a statement on the issue is read before Dartmouth home games at venues with a public address system. “Especially anything that interferes with an event in any way. We haven't gathered all the appropriate facts on this situation, but once we have, we'll follow through as we feel is necessary.”

Words such as “dick,” “fag” and “----sucker” were repeatedly shouted at the visitors Wednesday, many times with “f------” added as an adjective. Harvard's female players eventually sought the protection of an assistant coach after they said they were called “whores” and “sluts” while they cheered on their male peers. While playing his match, Franklin Cohen was told he had small genitals and asked if he liked bagels, a phrase his mother viewed as a reference to the family's Jewish surname.

‘Doughnut or Bagel'

Giudicelli said Susan Cohen confronted his group about the bagel phrase immediately after her son's match and was told it referred to Franklin Cohen having a zero or “bagel” on the scoreboard at a certain juncture in play.

“We discussed whether to say doughnut or bagel and obviously we decided to use the wrong word,” said Giudicelli, a junior defender from Emerald Hills, Calif., located between San Francisco and San Jose. “There was no anti-Semitism behind that.”

The event, at which the improved Big Green men had hoped to upset Harvard in Ivy League play for the first time in recent memory, attracted a crowd of roughly 300 to Berry's narrow second level. During team introductions on the main court before the matches began, Dartmouth was given a rowdy standing ovation while its foes were roundly booed. As the Crimson players walked to their various courts, they passed within inches of screaming spectators seated in the front rows of a bleacher section holding about 200 people.

Once play began, it was standing-room only as fans packed three and four deep in front of some of the glassed-in courts lining either side of the hall. Dartmouth points prompted wild cheering and occasional banging on the clear, back walls of some courts. A Big Green student dressed in a full-body parrot costume and another dressed as a cartoon bear led cheers and taunts.

Chants and comments such as “Harvard sucks” and “You're so rattled” began to give way to harder-edged comments as the matches heated up. Mike Lewis, playing No. 6 for Dartmouth against Cohen, is a member of Alpha Delta, which is located only a few hundred yards from Berry. Lewis' fraternity brothers were out in force and congregated at his court.

About half an hour into the Lewis-Cohen match, Giudicelli sat down next to a Crimson team member officially scoring one of the matches. Giudicelli distracted the visitor by draping an arm over his shoulder and speaking in his ear. Soon, Cohen was targeted with the bagel comments and obscenities and also called a “coward” and a “despicable human being.”

During a brief break between games, Giudicelli faced Cohen's parents, who are from the Boston area, from a distance of ten feet and screamed, “Did you raise your son to be a cheater?”, apparently referring to several recently disputed points. Another young male repeated the question while standing directly behind the couple, who ignored the comments. Cohen's father later said they had never experienced such treatment while following their son during his 8-year squash career.

“There's nothing wrong with being on top of the action or heckling,” Jerry Cohen said. “But I thought the fans here were horrible. Having spirit is outstanding, but being purposely off-color is not the way to cheer for your team.”

Dartmouth's first-year head coach Hansi Wiens said he was unaware of the abusive fan behavior until queried by a reporter midway through the match. He then asked to be steered towards Cohen's parents and headed in their direction, saying he would apologize.

“It's only a few fans causing a problem and it's mainly the soccer guys,” Wiens said. “I wish I could stop it but I can't stop it. That is not squash.”

‘Some Funny Things'

Dartmouth player Lewis said that because the Berry courts' back walls extend only about seven feet high, with open air and nets above them, “You can hear pretty much everything that's said” by spectators. He added, “There were some really funny things being said, and it's a shame if there was other stuff to take away from that.”

After Lewis defeated Cohen, a group of Dartmouth fans including Giudicelli occupied the front rows of the main court bleachers while the Big Green's Nicholas Sisodia challenged Harvard's Richard Hill. While amusing chants were shouted at Hill, the Singapore native was also subjected by Giudicelli’s group to some of the same obscenities that had been lobbed at Cohen. In addition, a young man seated near the soccer group raised his shirt and asked nearby Harvard women's players if they wanted “a piece of this.”

Soon after, a Harvard women's player spoke to a Crimson men's competitor, telling him she had been repeatedly harassed while cheering and that “being here felt like an assault. This is supposed to be a game.” She later requested that she not be identified for fear of Internet reprisal.

Shortly before the start of Hill and Sisodia's final game, Harvard coach Satinder Bajwa exited the main court in front of Giudicelli's group. Insults rained down but the coach gave no reaction and never slowed. Chris Smith, one of the Crimson's assistant coaches, said he knew venturing to Dartmouth would be a trip to hostile turf.

“When we've come up here the last few years, this place has been packed,” Smith said. “We tell our kids, especially the freshmen, they have to be ready for it and not to respond. Having the spectators so close and organized in their cheering is fun, but it can get out of hand.”

In e-mail exchanges with the Valley News Thursday, Bajwa declined comment other than to write “the matter will be dealt with internally with the two institutions involved.” Saying that his program did not complain to Dartmouth about the behavior, Smith nonetheless wrote: “We were aware of all of that going on and did handle things as best we could to not react in the moment as a team. I had all the girls around me at one point, very upset, looking for help. Those were very bad incidents.”

Continued Smith: “The Dartmouth coaching staff and players were apologetic to us after the match and I even saw their coaches doing crowd control during the match. College squash matches and fans have gotten out of hand at other schools in the past but crowd control and security were in place to make things stop. I think it's safe to say that next time a big match is (at Dartmouth), some crowd control security or upper (administrators) might be on hand to get the few bad ones out.”

The Harvard men, 3-0 and ranked No. 5 in the country, defeated No. 8 Dartmouth 6-3 and dropped the Big Green's record to 3-1. The Crimson women posted a 9-0 victory. The schools are not scheduled to meet in squash again during the regular season.

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or (603) 727-3227.

- 30 -

12 comments:

abbas said...

squash! one of my favourite sports to watch and play. (also the most difficult). little known fact in north america, squash reigning world champions for about thirty years were pakistani's. number one of them being this fellow called jahangir khan, considered as one of the best sportsmen ever. you can google/wiki him. he is also given this claim of the title as he holds the record for the longest unbeaten run of 555 consecutive games during competition over five years and this is the longest winning streak of not just squash, but any competitive sport. he's also won entire competitions and tournaments without losing a single point. the day he did get defeated in one game, he went on after it undefeated for another nine months. also google "squash khan dynasty". makes for awesome reading. also fun read here.

Vleeptron Dude said...

Hey hey hey Abbas, salam and (Canadian legal requirement) salut!

Well, now the Vleeptron Sports Network (VSN) is embarrassed for a negative-sounding post about your favorite sport.

VSN wishes to emphasize that we did not say anything negative about the excellent SPORT of squash -- just about the drunk rich Dartmouth frat boy yahoos (apparently Dartmouth soccer players) who dropped by to bad-vibe the visiting team.

I am guessing that during the era when Pakistan ruled the squash world, their champs and fans were paragons of sportsmanship.

This is how I know I'm getting old: I still remember sportsmanship, and think it was a profoundly important element of sport. I get this feeling that sportsmanship is like soooooo 1963, grampa.

So have you confessed your secret? Are you a squash player? Where did you pick up the sport? Do you still play? What's hot and exciting (and sportsmanlike) in the squash world these days?

Do left-handed squash players have an inherent advantage? (They do in fencing.)

Vleeptron Dude said...

Okay, now that we have accidentally careened into the topic of sport and sportsmanship, I got to ask you -- have you ever seen the movie "Lagaan"? Urdu: لگان; Hindi: लगान;

"That's not cricket," of course, is the way the English describe unsportsmanlike behavior -- on or off the playing field, and cricket itself carries the mythos that it is the sports world's most sportsmanlike game -- like tennis, but before John McEnroe.

Lagaan is about the most thrilling and the whackiest cricket match ever played on Planet Earth. Did you like the movie? If you never saw it, rent it yesterday and let me know your thoughts.

Vleeptron Dude said...

Wikipedia:

The cricket bat which Bhuvan used for scoring the winning runs in ["Lagaan"], was auctioned for 6,000,000 Pakistani rupees as a fund raiser for a cancer hospital in Lahore, Pakistan.

Abbas said...

heh yes i do play squash at an amateur level. never really picked it up weirdly enough until i moved to canada though. it's pretty rough on the body. my dad has a lifetime back injury from squash and i've developed severe shin splints from it to the point that i have trouble walking at a fast pace for more than ten minutes. though five minutes on a squash court is the equivalent of an entire basketball game in terms of exercise. and yes being a leftie is an advantage for sure, unfortunately i can't use my left handed skills as i only use them playing cricket. i can bat leftie but otherwise am a born rightie. (actually any sport where i have swing something with both hands, ie. baseball, golf etc) is when i play leftie, anything else is right handed for me. and of course i've seen lagaan. the score for the film was pretty awesome too. i'm impressed you've seen it, or was that because of all the oscar hype behind it? amir khan made quite a name for himself after the film. and that cancer hospital is more than likely the shaukhat khanum memorial hospital founded by imran khan, the famous cricketer (one of the best all rounders ever produced in cricket) turned politician. wiki him too, has just as scandalous a career as tiger woods. at the time when imran khan led pakistan to win the cricketing world cup in '92, pakistan dominated world sports in cricket, squash, field hockey (our national sport), polo (polo pretty much developed in our neck of the woods and the shandur valley in gilgit is the highest and oldest polo field in the world) and snooker.

Vleeptron Dude said...

I saw Lagaan by lucky accident, deep in the night on an Arte Cinema cable channel, and would have kept surfing except that it mesmerized me instantly. I'd never heard of the flick before -- it was nominated for the best foreign Oscar, but a Serbian film won -- I don't know beans about cricket, but this glimpse of life under the Raj -- well, I'd never had a chance to look through this window so clearly and closely before, and I couldn't look away. What a story! What a movie!

I think the most shocking thing about Lagaan was how the Englishmen -- well, they just weren't cricket!

Yeah, uhhh, I'm sort of -- what word would you use for it? Dextridextrous? I write righty. In baseball I bat righty -- I guess because almost all little kids are taught to bat righty -- but I field lefty, throw lefty, play tennis lefty, bowl lefty. And if I have to kick a ball, I kick lefty.

Abbas said...

i'm not big into bollywood but i can definitely recommend you some classics if you're interested.

Vleeptron Dude said...

A short-lived Indian grocery near us had great frozen dinners and also a rack of Bollywood videos, which we'd rent. You know my Hindi ain't too good, and they didn't usually have English subtitles.

Clearly Bollywood movies require the audience to understand a whole different set of storytelling conventions from Hollywood movies.

As I watched Lagaan, I was expecting at any moment that the plot would suddenly stop and all the cricketeers would burst into song and dance. I was SO grateful it never happened.

You bet, I'll take any title you recommend.

Abbas Halai said...

try "Satya" for a more modern look into the underworld of the city of mumbai. if you want a classic from the 70's, widely considered amitabh bachan's best film ever, try "Sholay".

Abbas said...

btw, when you get to finishing sholay, notice how heavily influenced it is by sergio leone and akira kurosawa. also the classic 70's bonding of two males is considered to be verily butch cassidy and sundance. lemme know what you think.

Viagra Online said...

Brilliant! This team of strategists is unstoppable. Just think about how elegantly ingenious Academically Dartmouth's strategy really is.

sexshoptienda.blogspot.com said...

Goodness, there is a lot of worthwhile info above!